Knights, mercs, and hackers! Update #232 is working its way through the dome now, with an exciting new Hacker Talent Prank, big boosts to all the secondary objective rewards, reduction of cost of Extra Item Carry nodes, reduction in Team Power Level boost for hack-only missions, and more. It's a big raft of changes, get on and let's heist! If you're enjoying the relentless pace of updates as we slog our way toward release in mid-May, please take a moment to share the game with a friend and leave a review steamhappy

Hacker makes Prank Call

Update #232 finishes out the Hacker's tree and unlocks their final Talent - Prank! With Prank you can target an enemy who is eligible to be dispatched by security (not in combat, not a VIP, not a Head Hunter, etc) and debuff them with a high-priority dispatch marker. This means the next time the Sec AI dispatches someone to investigate an event of any kind, this enemy will be the one that is called in. This Talent has been so fun in playtesting and creates all sorts of cool new scenarios for your heisting Stealth teams to pull off. Need that pesky guard to go away? Prank him and trigger a security camera halfway across the map. Or Prank him just in time for a body timer to expire and bye bye! We hope you enjoy this new vector of stealth play as well!

Improved Secondary Rewards

Secondary Objective rewards have taken a big step up today with some new balancing going into effect. The rewards have jumped up to +2-4 Favors, +25-35% XP, +25-35% Payment or +20-50% Influence. Also, we have removed Blue Cubes as a reward type, these are not exciting - you can now only get Red or Gold Cubes. Finally, we've chances that additional rewards - like Blueprint or NBS cubes - will be offered for secondary objectives, so you should be seeing a more interesting mix of those. Coming next in this area, we've got 2 additional Secondary Objective goals that we will be adding around Escort / Exposed VIP missions, and we will also be doing some balancing for missions like Alpha Strike and Siege that can't get secondary objectives and are poorer for it.

Cheaper Extra Item Carry

With Update #232, we've reduced the level point cost for each Extra Item Carry node from 5 to 3. This makes these nodes more interesting to consider for your characters. We are also working on a visual upgrade to the Extra Item Carry node because it looks like a Talent and that has evidently caused confusion. The Extra Item Carry node costs 1 level point to Train into and does not take a Talent point. For now, we've fixed the pricing for its upgrade nodes but in the next update we will resolve the issue with it looking like a Talent and get its text to clearly share that it does not cost a Talent point.

Reduced Hack-Only Team Power Level

Every mission you run adds to your Team Power Level. In this way, the sum total of your missions pushes the game's progression and difficulty higher. To help balance this further, we've reduced the Team Power Level boost that you get from hack-only missions further, as these are small missions between the full team missions and should not have such a big impact. Hack-only missions now add 50% of a full proc-gen missions would add to your Team Power Level which is 50% of what a high-risk narrative mission would add.

Other F10s!

We are always hard at work on digging into the F10 pile, so we appreciate every player sending in feedback. With Update #232, we've improved some issues with mission naming (some missions were coming up with the name ERROR SOMETHING a lot!), fixed an issue where the Sec AI could dispatch an enemy who wasn't part of the faction (Fenian Sec AI dispatches Brave Star wut?). We also put out a few hotfixes between the last update that improved the tactical thinking for enemies who are trying to close the distance again in a hotfix.

v1.10.9 - #232: Prank Call - 4/2/2025

- Improved secondary mission objective rewards; now +2-4 Favors, +25-35% XP, +25-35% Payment, +20-50% Influence - Increased the chance of Blueprints and NBS Cubes being offered as rewards for secondary objectives - Removed Blue NBS Cubes as a possible secondary objective reward, only Gold and Red Cubes ever offered - Unlocked Hacker Talent Prank (was Stemlocker) - allowing you to pick which enemy agent is dispatched by security to investigate events - Swapped Downed Shields and Prank in the Hacker's Talent trees - Improved Hacker's Trunkpatch Talent upgrades: upgraded node to -10 AP, upgraded node to -1 recharge rate, upgraded final buff node to +10% Connection from +5% - Reduce cost of Extra Item Carry nodes to 3 from 5 each - Reduce Team Power Level boost from completing Hack Only Missions to 50% of regular proc-gen missions - Fixed issue with some missions having "ERROR" in their name 50% of the time - Fixed issue with Sec AI dispatches that could tap enemies of another faction - Improved long-range movement decision making by enemies to close gaps faster - Fixed issue that could cause Hacker to freeze up after starting the turn hacking and then disconnecting

[ 2025-04-03 20:46:44 CET ] [ Original post ]